My story
About four years ago, during a summer of intense stress, I found myself staring at a bowl full of yellow turmeric powder at 3 am. I was about to pour water into the powder, mix it into a paste, and spread it all over my hands and legs.
It all started out with getting eczema on the backs of my hands and the backs of my legs. The eczema began as annoying and quickly became unbearably itchy, to the point of keeping me up into the wee hours of the morning. The patches of itchy skin became inflamed and infected, eventually, like little maniacal monsters intent on driving me to the edge of insanity.
Which is where I found myself at 3 am this one night. This bright yellow turmeric paste was a last resort as an eczema treatment because although it works really, really well, it also permanently stains anything it touches. Skin, clothing, bed sheets, carpet. You name it, it's yellow. If you have ever stained your clothes with yellow Indian curry, it's because the food contains turmeric.
So anyway, on this swelteringly hot July night, I was sleep-deprived and itchy beyond imagination. I didn't care if this paste stained my entire BYU apartment yellow. Anything to get the itching to stop. I whipped my covers off, slid out of bed and padded quietly to the kitchen to dump a few tablespoons of yellow turmeric powder into a bowl. I mixed in a little water to make a paste, and then padded back to the bathroom, bowl of turmeric paste in hand. In the tiny bathroom, I stripped off my sweaty clothes and with a spoon, spread turmeric paste on my legs and wrapped both of my thighs in gauze. Then I spread more yellow paste on my hands before putting clean, white socks over them to make sure I didn't stain anything. The apartment was stiflingly hot, probably 85 to 90 degrees, and so I didn't put on anything else but my underwear.
After walking out of the bathroom in my underwear, white gauze legs and white sock hands, I felt wired and too awake to sleep, I decided to turn on a CD with a OneDirection song that my roommate and I had been laughing over a few days earlier: "That's What Makes You Beautiful." No one was home at my apartment, and I started singing along while dancing around and our blue-carpeted living room had ample room for said dancing. Thus, I'm pretty sure I was in the middle of a lunge accompanied by air-punches when I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror that hung on the closet door. A scantily-clad mummy with sock-covered hands stared back at me. She had dark circles under her eyes and her sweaty wrappings were covered in yellow stains. Her disheveled hair pointed in AllDirections.
At the sight of myself looking so haggard, and hearing the song trail off with "...that's what makes you beautiful," a laugh started down in my barely-clothed belly and worked its way up into my chest. I laughed because eczema had brought me to the edge where tragedy meets comedy, and seeing myself in that state was liberating.
The solution
Here are the categories of things that have healed my eczema:
Tons of people say that the right kinds of lotions and creams are what you need for eczema. They are helpful in a pinch and I use steroid creams to bring down the inflammation when I accidentally eat something I'm allergic to. For long-term solutions, however, it seems that for me, my skin responds when I do things to help my overall health improve from the list above.
About four years ago, during a summer of intense stress, I found myself staring at a bowl full of yellow turmeric powder at 3 am. I was about to pour water into the powder, mix it into a paste, and spread it all over my hands and legs.
It all started out with getting eczema on the backs of my hands and the backs of my legs. The eczema began as annoying and quickly became unbearably itchy, to the point of keeping me up into the wee hours of the morning. The patches of itchy skin became inflamed and infected, eventually, like little maniacal monsters intent on driving me to the edge of insanity.
Which is where I found myself at 3 am this one night. This bright yellow turmeric paste was a last resort as an eczema treatment because although it works really, really well, it also permanently stains anything it touches. Skin, clothing, bed sheets, carpet. You name it, it's yellow. If you have ever stained your clothes with yellow Indian curry, it's because the food contains turmeric.
So anyway, on this swelteringly hot July night, I was sleep-deprived and itchy beyond imagination. I didn't care if this paste stained my entire BYU apartment yellow. Anything to get the itching to stop. I whipped my covers off, slid out of bed and padded quietly to the kitchen to dump a few tablespoons of yellow turmeric powder into a bowl. I mixed in a little water to make a paste, and then padded back to the bathroom, bowl of turmeric paste in hand. In the tiny bathroom, I stripped off my sweaty clothes and with a spoon, spread turmeric paste on my legs and wrapped both of my thighs in gauze. Then I spread more yellow paste on my hands before putting clean, white socks over them to make sure I didn't stain anything. The apartment was stiflingly hot, probably 85 to 90 degrees, and so I didn't put on anything else but my underwear.
After walking out of the bathroom in my underwear, white gauze legs and white sock hands, I felt wired and too awake to sleep, I decided to turn on a CD with a OneDirection song that my roommate and I had been laughing over a few days earlier: "That's What Makes You Beautiful." No one was home at my apartment, and I started singing along while dancing around and our blue-carpeted living room had ample room for said dancing. Thus, I'm pretty sure I was in the middle of a lunge accompanied by air-punches when I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror that hung on the closet door. A scantily-clad mummy with sock-covered hands stared back at me. She had dark circles under her eyes and her sweaty wrappings were covered in yellow stains. Her disheveled hair pointed in AllDirections.
At the sight of myself looking so haggard, and hearing the song trail off with "...that's what makes you beautiful," a laugh started down in my barely-clothed belly and worked its way up into my chest. I laughed because eczema had brought me to the edge where tragedy meets comedy, and seeing myself in that state was liberating.
The solution
Here are the categories of things that have healed my eczema:
- Eliminating foods I am allergic to. It turns out that I'm allergic to nickel, salicylates, and histamines, and any foods that contain high levels of these chemicals aggravate my eczema. The only way I figured this out was a very strict allergy-elimination diet that took 3 months to fully complete. The list of foods I'm allergic to is long, and my friends feel bad about it, but I feel great about it because it means I have control over eczema! There are ways to train your body to let go of food allergies (NAET is an acupuncture treatment and in Germany, people take drops under their tongues). I'm not willing to put in the time and money right now for those treatments, and might do it later.
- Making sure my skin has all the necessary nutrients to rebuild itself and heal: I found that zinc oxide cream or zinc supplements (don't take on an empty stomach!!) and basically drinking a few tablespoons of flaxseed oil per day helped my skin heal. Making sure your Omega 3-6-9 fats are balanced does wonders for healing the skin. Most Americans are imbalanced and need more Omega 3 fats through fish and seeds.
- Living a low-stress life with plenty of sleep and happiness. Last year my eczema flared up again after I'd had a long bout of insomnia. Getting a sleeping medication and sleeping a ton magically healed my skin without any extra effort on my part.
- Going au natural with lotions, soaps, detergents, and household cleaners. The fragrance-free and natural stuff doesn't aggravate my skin. The really strong chemicals and soaps tend to dry my skin out and make it more susceptible to eczema.
- Keeping the inside of my body healthy with good nutrition, detoxing when needed, water, probiotics, and vitamins when needed. This helps overall health and immune system function.
Tons of people say that the right kinds of lotions and creams are what you need for eczema. They are helpful in a pinch and I use steroid creams to bring down the inflammation when I accidentally eat something I'm allergic to. For long-term solutions, however, it seems that for me, my skin responds when I do things to help my overall health improve from the list above.
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